CHENNAI : Wearing a shirt that has seen better days, 65-year-old S Balu sits at a bus stop in Adambakkam.
He looks like one of the many impoverished destitute people we come across on roads everyday. There is just one difference. Balu’s father was an MP and a four-time Member of the Legislative Council.
SK Sambandhan, his father, won the 1967 parliamentary elections on a DMK ticket from Tiruttani. Before that he was a Congress MLC. “I have visited Delhi several times with my family, when my father was an MP,” says Balu.
“Now, I live on the streets. I eat from Amma Canteen nearby, with the little money my friends give me,” he says.
Balu used to work as a driver and live with his family till he suffered a paralytic attack. Now he has no job, no money or family. “They all left me when they realised I couldn’t support them anymore,”he says.
‘I regret my dad made no money from politics’
Balu used to live in a private home till three years ago. "But after they shifted to a new place, which is not accessible for me due to my paralysis, I decided to stay on the streets,” he says.
Balu claims that his father, during his good days, was approached by several businessmen from across the country to strike deals. “My father never knew how to take bribes. He gave the little money he got as kickbacks to the party. I know this because I used to drive him around Chennai,” he remembers.
He claims his father’s political career came to an end following a dispute with the newly elected DMK president M Karunanidhi. In 1971 elections, the Tiruttani seat was given to Congress as it was in alliance with the DMK. “My father said things he could not take back,” he says.
“Following this, probably as a consequence, our rice mills in Kurinchipadi were shut down. My father eventually left the party. He failed to make money in his political career. At least I should have been smart and established myself,” he adds.
“In fact, my father got a ‘second chance’ at politics through former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran. He had quit the DMK and was forming his own party. But my father did not realise MGR’s potential and refused to join him, though he was promised a Cabinet post,” Balu says.“I don’t blame my father or hate him for my current situation. But if I could go back in time, I would have persuaded him to make money for ourselves.”
With that, he walks away with his meagre worldly belongings to the Amma canteen for his first meal of the day...